This site is now no longer being updated. It will remain here as part of the wonderful history of the internet as there are a few links that will resolve here and will remain here. New non-technical blogging will now be athttp://nigeljam.es and all new posts will happen there.

Other technical blogging can be found on SCN or at my company SquareCloud

Google has now completed the assimilation of Feedburner and so you can get my feed for the new domain at http://feeds2.feedburner.com/GettingTechnical . If my subscribers got every post reposted to this feed as I changed the domain over, please accept my apologies. I will be doing a little webhousework at both domains in the next day or so so if you have something to add or a suggestion or just want to say ‘hi’ then my contact details are here.

One of the sessions is a discussion on certification. This has been a hot topic in the SAP community lately. New MentorMichael Koch is currently running a survey on how certification relates to contractors. You can complete this survey here and it would be great to see some good results from that survey at the unconference.

One of the great benefits of these days is the networking and conversations with people in trenches. In credit crunched times such as today these can be even more valuable than official training sessions and (dare I say it) certification.

If you would like to come along to meet the mentors, participate in the sessions, run a session for yourself there is still time to signup.

]]>https://nigeljames.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/sap-inside-track-london-2009/feed/3nigeljamesSAP Inside Track London 2009Software and the Lawhttps://nigeljames.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/software-and-the-law/
https://nigeljames.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/software-and-the-law/#commentsWed, 07 Jan 2009 16:26:16 +0000http://nigeljames.wordpress.com/?p=428If you check the sylabus on most it ComSci degrees, it is unlikely that you will find a course or even a hat tip towards anything legal. Even the course that I took which included subjects on Communication, Managment and a full year project had no content on anything legal.

This is why my friend Thomas Otter is investigating in his efforts to become a Pointy Headed Doctor err… a Pretty Harmless Driver … err Purple Headless Dragon. Actually none of those. He is completing his PhD. Not to be confused with PHP which, I grant you, at some level is very similar but on others completely different.

Legal systems have evolved over centuries to codify rights and obligations in societies. Throughout history law and technology have interacted, modifying each other along the way. It is often an uneasy relationship…

I want to ask as many software people as possible about what they understand of the law that can impact software, and what their attitudes are towards a couple of legal concepts in a software context.

It is designed to gather information about the knowledge, education and attitude of software developers towards the law related to software, and how law is or isn’t built into software. My goal is not to just have a small survey of a couple of hundred developers, but to really survey lots of them.

To do this, I want to tap as many of my readers as I can to spread the news of the survey, and for as many of you to take the survey as possible. The more answers I can get from around the world, the richer the results will be. I will also be following up with telephone interviews with a much smaller sample group.

In this survey I have used the term software developer rather broadly. I define this to be anyone working professionally to design, build or maintain software (information technology). So if you are a product manager, solution manager, implementation consultant, systems architect, business analyst, or a systems tester, for instance, then we would be just as interested in your responses. The survey isn’t just aimed at those who code, but those who make a living from its construction and maintenance. Much of this group would fall under that definition. The Germans have a rather nice term,informatiker, but it doesn’t really translate very well.

You can access the survey here or use this link in twitter to get the word out to your friends social network, tribe or whatever the new word for friends is this week. http://is.gd/eACI

The goal is to get at least 1006 responses so that the data is statistically significant. (You did stats 101 didn’t you?) I am reliably informed that it is progressing well but until you take 10 minutes of your precious time to add your response it will not be complete.

]]>nigeljamesHappy New YearIt not everyday…https://nigeljames.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/it-not-everyday/
Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:00:01 +0000http://nigeljames.wordpress.com/?p=423… you get on the front page of SDN

Last year the guys at OmniTI, primarily Chris Shiflett kicked off a PHP Advent calendar and while I was looking for it last week I was disappointed to not find one. At least not where I found it last year.

This year all your favourite PHP authors are back at a shiny new domain with design assistance from Jon and Jon.

So count down the shopping days to Christmas with a great set of articles from some of the best authors around at PHPAdvent.org.

I note, via a number ofsources, that Zend Framework 1.7 is out. As we are close to going live on our project that is using ZF for the first time we will not be putting 1.7 into production just yet. The most interesting thing to me is the updated Dojo as we are finding those Dojo forms to be kinda funky. I am looking forward to playing with Zend_Amf though.

What would interest me most in a 2.0 release (if anyone is listening) is a Zend_Payment component. I am thinking a component with a nice abstract adaptor similar to Zend_Db that could have implemenations for Paypal, Google Checkout, SecPay (or is that Paypoint?), WorldPay, eWay etc etc.

I think that a payment component is a critical part of a web toolkit. On my project we are starting to build this out as we need to, refactoring old classes into a Company_Payment class and if I get really excited I may even sign the CLA and get involved in ZF myself. It would be great to have leadership from Zend on this get an awesome base abstract class to build off.

]]>https://nigeljames.wordpress.com/2008/11/19/zend-framework-17-is-out/feed/1nigeljamesHow would you like to pay for that Sir?No more “Fail Whale?”https://nigeljames.wordpress.com/2008/11/18/no-more-fail-whale/
Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:00:43 +0000http://nigeljames.wordpress.com/?p=397Twitter was doing some maintenance today…

It really doesn’t take much to change the world and today as part of blog action day I am going to challenge you to do something that will help someone out of poverty and maintain it.

Maybe you are already doing something to make poverty history. Fantastic – keep it up.

If you are reading this post you have the resources to make a difference in someone’s life.

I am not going to prescribe that you support the organisations that I support but I have found that Compassion is a champion of those in poverty and works well with children, their families and the whole community to bring change in a region.

Having supported and sponsored kids over several years it is evident to me that they do excellent work at getting families out of poverty by supporting education and health of kids and supporting whole regions where they operate.

So on this blog action day focussed on poverty give a thought to making a difference in a childs life. It really will make a difference. You can’t do everything, but you can do something.

]]>nigeljamesAn SLAhttps://nigeljames.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/an-sla/
Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:09:51 +0000http://nigeljames.wordpress.com/?p=388I was mildly amused to see that open source analyst James Governor has put an SLA on his blogging activity.

In retrospect it is not such a bad thing. So here goes mine:

I will write at least one post a month on anything that mildly relates to SAP, PHP, Eclipse, Usability, Web Applications, HR, CRM, Cycling, Cricket or anything else under the banner of Life the Universe and Everything.